Script

Planning

What I will discuss in my video

• The history of zoetropes

• Brief coverage of similar toys around at the same sort of time (phenakistoscope, praxinoscope etc)

• How a zoetrope is made

• Examples of 3D zoetropes

Script

Intro

Mark Roget once wrote the Persistence of Vision theory. He stated that 'the human eye sees one image and carries with it an after-image onto the image that follows it, thus creating an apparent continuity.' Animation studios such as Disney have been exploiting this way of tricking the brain for around 90 years to create all the fun 2D animated films we've enjoyed at home. You may think that it wasn't until the 1990s with the release of Pixar's Toy Story that 3D computer animation came on the scene. But did you know that 3D animation was around some 120 years before that, and I'm not talking about stop motion animation either.

Middle

Early Animation Toys

Let's keep things simple in 2 dimensions for the time being, and have a look at 2D animation. 2D animation can be traced back all the way to 70bc, but perhaps the most well-known form of physical 2D animation came around in the 1500s in the form of flip-book animation. (Something similar to flipbook animation was invented in 1894 by Herman Casler (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBWTjCo659Q 0:45 - 0:50) the Mutoscope) Anyway, If you have some sticky notes lying around you could very easily make a flip-book animation of a (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ecTO22ulRM&t=288s 3:17 - 3:24) ball bouncing. (It's interesting to think that flip-book animation likely prefigures the types of animation we've seen in the likes of Disney and others cel-sheet animations.)

(Image 1) Did you know that the phrase 'To Animate' (and other related words like animated, animation etc) is derived from a Latin word 'Animare' which means 'To give life to' (lock that away for now). Pretty cool to think that when (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5JHDAs_RrA 10:33 - 10:41) we animate something we are literally 'giving life' to what is essentially just a still image. But that's all an animation is - a bunch of still images shown right after one another, which raises the question - how on earth do we perceive all these still images as movement?
As I mentioned earlier, the (Image 2) persistence of vision theory determined the way in which humans perceive movement. Mark Roget stated that 'the human eye sees one image and carries with it an after-image onto the image that follows it, thus creating an apparent continuity.'

Ok back up to 3 dimensions again. We mentioned that flip-book animation came around in the 1500s, but we'd have to wait another 300 years before we got some proper animation toys. In 1831 Joseph Plateau created the phenakistoscope - a spinning wheel with frame-by-frame illustrations around the edges. You may notice some slits around the edge, and those are crucial - without them the whole animation would fall apart and look something like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BefB2qFB6Sc 0:21-0:24)… which isn't very impressive. But when you sit (Image 3) in front of a mirror and face the phenakistoscope toward the mirror, spin it and look through the slits you get something like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUJm4Hy3yTQ 0:10 - 0:14)…
Just 3 years later in 1834 William George Horner invented what we now know as the zoetrope, and they were sold as toys as early as 1867. The word 'zoetrope' translates to 'Wheel of Life' from the Greek root words meaning 'life' and 'turning.' Similar to a phenakistoscope, it makes use of a spinning disc and being viewed through slits. With a zoetrope however, you have a hollow cylinder, and then the frames of your animation are placed on the inside of the cylinder facing in. The cylinder itself has slits cut into it which give the same effect as they did on the phenakistoscope - allowing each frame to be visible for only a fraction of a second so that we don't see all that motion blur.
Émile Reynaud decided to get on-board with making animation toys, and in 1877 his praxinoscope was patented. It effectively works the same as a zoetrope, but instead of viewing the animation through slits, you look at the mirrors which perform the same task as the slits did - allowing each frame to only be visible for a fraction of a second.

Admittedly though, we are still in the world of 2D animation, but if you can just bear with me another 10 years until 1887, we finally get a 3D zoetrope, thanks to Étienne-Jules Marey. His 3D zoetrope featured 10 models of a bird in flight… (Image 4)
(Weird to think that there was a 53 year gap between a 2D zoetrope and a 3D zoetrope, but to be fair they are quite complicated to make).

Say you did want to make a 3D zoetrope, this is what you would have to do. Just for the sake of this example, let's say you wanted to animate a bird flying, flapping its wings. For frame 1 you would just have a model of a bird with its wings spread out. For frame 2 you would make a completely new model, but adjust the wings a little bit so that it looks like it came just after frame 1. Repeat this around 20 times (or for as many frames as you want there to be in the animation), and also make the last frame look like it came before the first frame to make a perfect loop. You then arrange all these models on a round table. Then, make the table spin and either use a strobe light so that the models are only shown for a fraction of a second, or view it through slits. If everything worked right, the final result is mesmerising. ((https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40__creuq7c&t=1s 0:03 - 0:07, 0:10 - 0:13) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rQrkaExnt4&t=26s 0:50 - 0:53))

End

After looking into the history of animation, I have a newfound respect for the traditional forms of animation and the machines/toys that were the foundational building blocks for animation today. Because of this investigation and my developing interest in this area, I would like to explore building a zoetrope for my FMP. I feel this would be a good way to develop my digital skills into a physical medium.

Images for Video